Asilah

This past week seemed to crawl by, and I cannot believe it's only been seven days since the adventure to the falls of Ouzoud. This weekend I wanted to travel because I knew that next weekend was the end of Ramadan and supposedly it’s a huge party. I do not want to miss being with the family for that experience, so I flipped through the guidebook in search of an easily accessible destination with a beach and a beautiful town. Enter stage left: Asliah; A picturesque, small town that attracts a lot of tourists because of its clean-whitewashed medina streets, the old Portuguese ramparts surrounding the medina and a large amount of art; whether it be found in studios, on murals outside houses, or at the annual art/music festival held there every August. I wanted a relaxing weekend where we could find a beach and just walk around town and ‘be’ or read a book in a park.

My travel companions would again be my trusty sidekick Frenchman Henry accompanied by the lovely Asia and Maggie. I got Byron, a fellow CC student, to come along for the ride. We would conveniently be taking the train there from Rabat. The train ride there is a painless 4-hour ride for about 130 MDH round trip, which comes out to be about 14 bucks, and is direct with no stops or changes of trains needed, so it was a welcome change from last weekend. We got an early start Saturday morning leaving Rabat around 7:45 and sleeping/daydreaming most of the ride to Asilah. When we got off the train we hopped on the bus that brought us 2km into town. A clean, well laid out Nouvelle Ville (new town) with kids running around and fountains flowing welcomed us. We made our way to a nice budget hotel we had read about, but upon arrival passports where mandatory and of course most of us had left ours in Rabat. So, we wandered around finally finding a shadier hotel with stained sheets that would have to do.



We had read about a beach called Paradise beach that boasted of clean sand, no people and a nice 3 km hike along the coast to get to it. Sounded perfect. So we got changed, and started walking along the rampart wall of the medina to the southern end of town where we found the road/path that led along the coast. The hike was beautiful; traversing up and over ridges along the coast, looking down on the crashing waves against the sandstone cliffs and watching fishermen cast their lines into the ocean. We had a little picnic on top of one of the ridges. About two and half hours later and after what was more like 5km, we crested the final ridge and the beach laid out before us. It reminded me very much of the Oregon coast. The beach was long and broad and turned out to be the flattest beach I’d ever been on. The sand was very fine and you could walk out into the water for 100 yards before it would get to deep to stand. We played in the waves and body surfed for a bit. It was getting close to 6 and we knew that if we didn’t want to walk back the way we came we would need to find a ride back to town. After negotiating with a buggy driver we hopped on a horse drawn buggy for a bumpy, but great ride, back to town. We made our way along a dirt road for 20 minutes and then onto a paved road. The highlight was when I saw a man herding his sheep with the help of a Portuguese water dog! Lisbon! Made me miss my dog, but it was great to see a dog move and run the way my dog does.









Spent the evening at an overpriced, small-portioned restaurant, which I don’t really have much to say about. Went to a café with Henry where we enjoyed our regular Fanta Citron while watching Espanoyla beat Valencia. Played some cards in the hotel room and hit the hay after a long but good day.



We all slept in except Bryon. When we finally did wake up the sun was shinning, and we felt rested. We made our way to the ramparts and the entrance of the medina. This medina was the cleanest one I have been to so far and was beautifully painted. We had an espresso and made our way through small streets with interesting murals. The ambience of the town was perfect and calm, and you were always excited to see what kind of mural or paint job the building around the corner would have. We came to this house with a painting of hundred of little black figures called “The Tree of Life”: I think it was my favorite mural.









We had to catch the 2:45 train home so we went back the hotel packed up and decided to walk to the train station. Started reading Al Gore’s new book The Assault on Reason and I have to say I think it’s a good and important read for anyone concerned about the current state of politics and democracy in our country. A very intelligent and well-researched man with important things to say, take a look.